Net Neutrality: Who Backs It

It is never really the intention of the New York Times to disseminate information. It is all propaganda and talking points, just WMD in Iraq, all the time. But sometimes the narrative is a bit threadbare and some information can actually be discerned amongst the polemic and advocacy. The recent article, summarized bellow, on Net Neutrality is a case in point.

While it focuses on tiny free speech promoters (what the NYT calls “scrappy nonprofits”), it just has to give their names, and it is easy to look them up and see who funds them or runs them, even if the NYT refuses to admit who they are. It is unusually easy to catch the NYT in its lies of omission.

The NYT article with a gigantic photograph of a tiny protest of four people may take three-quarters of the business page to proclaim the mass movement against the FCC, but the demonstrations mounted by the 1.8 million strong “Fight for the Future” turn out to be 18 people outside a Verizon store in Shoreline Washington, and 15 people outside the New York Stock Exchange. I suppose the other 1, 799,967 people were busy that day.

The summary of the article below has parenthetical comments that add in donor information (with URLs) and a few other observations. In sum, the scrappy nonprofits lionized by the NYT are simply covert subsidiaries of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Feeling scrappy now?

==========

Cecilia Kang

“Leading the Fight To Save Net Neutrality; A Scrappy 10-Person Nonprofit Has Been Working For Years To Block the Change The FCC Is Expected to Pass Next Week; The Tiny Outfit Leading the Fight To Stop The Repeal of Net Neutrality; An Obama-Era Policy That Helps Protect Free Speech Online May Soon Be Dismantled”, in New York Times, December 8, 2017. pp. B1, B6.

Hundreds of [generally tiny] protests were staged nationwide on Thursday (December 7) and the NYT gives it three quarters of the Business front page. One protest was the 18 person protest in Shoreline, Washington, outside a Verizon store. A protest at the New York Stock Exchange saw 15 people chanting slogans. The protests were organized by the “scrappy 10-person nonprofit”, Fight for the Future, founded by Tiffiniy Chen and Holmes Wilson, and has 1.8 million supporters on social media.

The article states that Fight opposes the FCC plan to scrap Net Neutrality, the 2015 Obama Administration policy, which would make it possible to block websites. [? this follows by a few days the Google plan to reduce access to all Russian websites] The proposed change supported by the Trump Administration is never discussed in the article.

Fight for the Future [funded, in part, by the Open Society Foundations (https://www.fightforthefuture.org/supporters/)] works with allies like Free Press [no public information on donors; 990 lists the names of no contributors] and Demand Progress [no public information on donors; interlocking directorships with Democratic and Soros organizations: http://mediademocracyfund.org/funding-partners/; 990 lists the names of no contributors], through innumerable websites like www.battleforthenet.com. [Note: The NYT almost never provides a URL] It got its start with a $800000 grant from the Media Democracy Fund [funded, in part, by the Open Society Foundations]. It remains well connected: Marvin Ammori, general counsel for Hyperloop One, is a board member of Fight for the Future. Now Fight has a $1.5 million annual budget, and is largely funded, the NYT insists, by the Ford Foundation, Knight Foundation, venture capitalists such as Brad Feld of the Foundry Group and Craig Newmark of Craigslist.org. [Note that the NYT omits the Open Society Foundations.] This year, Duckduckgo donated $25000, and Yelp $10000. Fight says its tools channeled 800000 calls to Congress and 6.7 million emails to Congress.

Google and Facebook have keep a low profile recently on this issue, but they do not censor Fight’s websites.